The Thursday War

by Karen Traviss

  “And if she wants to remove the chip,” Lasky said, “she’ll have to gnaw her own leg off.”

  Parangosky wondered how long it would be before she tried to persuade a Huragok to remove it. “I wouldn’t put that past her. How does she get on with Glassman?” Parangosky didn’t like the choice of chief engineer either, but he was the best technical man for the job. “Any pissing contests?”

  “Yes, ma’am, and they’re pretty well matched,” Lasky said. “She doesn’t like being tasked by anyone below admiral. She’s obviously used to a lot more gold braid at her beck and call.”

  “So … she’s secured, everyone including the Huragok have been warned not to let her con them, and she’s getting results.”

  Lasky looked pained. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. I don’t want her here any longer than she needs to be. The moment she’s done, ship her back to Ivanoff.” Halsey was less of a risk locked up on an ONI research station. The more people who knew, even those with top security clearance, the greater the chance of the news leaking. There was never a monopoly of information, not even for ONI. “Still no dedicated AI?”

  Del Rio started to shake his head but seemed to think better of it. Someone had obviously told him never to actually say no to her. “I’m going to keep Aine until I find the right one. She’s used to ships in refit and she does things by the book. That’s all I need right now until we start working-up.”

  “Well, you’d better choose a permanent one soon, Andrew, or you’ll get one assigned,” Parangosky said. “Top-level AIs are my part of ship. And they don’t grow on trees.”

  Del Rio nodded but he didn’t look her in the eye. He was probably thinking it was time she retired or had the grace to die, but even that wasn’t going to save him from her scrutiny.

  Or Serin Osman’s, when the day comes.

  “So where’s this coffee?” she said. “Let’s see how the command bridge is shaping up before Terrence wolfs all the pastries. Lead on, Captain.”

  Del Rio forced a smile and led her to the elevator, flanked by Lasky. Parangosky caught the XO’s eye and just did a slow blink. You’ve got it all under control, Tom. This ship was all power, all refinements, her capability now far beyond the Covenant’s even before its fall.

  They had nothing left to throw at Earth now, not unless the Forerunners decided to rise from the dead.

  She was going to enjoy that coffee.

  ONIRF TREVELYAN, FORMERLY THE FORERUNNER WORLD KNOWN AS ONYX

  The perfect blue sky that Jul ‘Mdama could see from his cell was as big a lie as any the humans had told him.

  Humans deceived. It was their defining feature, their strategy of choice, and it had brought him to this forsaken place. But it was also the key to how he would escape. He simply didn’t know exactly how yet.

  His life was now lived in a room twenty paces wide by twenty-five paces long, with one large window that he was still evaluating to see how easily it might break. This was no Forerunner building. It was a prefabricated box of steel-framed composite panels, created by humans, whose flimsy artifacts could usually be smashed. But where would he go once he escaped this room? How would he find a ship to leave the planet? These things were possible, he was sure, but there was one fact he had gleaned by accident: this world wasn’t a planet at all. It was yet another Forerunner construct, an artificial world the humans called a Dyson sphere.

  One of the guards had told him that there was no point trying to escape because the sky he was looking at was a solid roof, its blue perfection and occasional clouds just an illusion. Jul recognized the word sphere because the guard had drawn a circle in the air with his fingers as he said it, and the translation device had provided the Sangheili word for globe.

  Sphere. Jul practiced the sffff sound. It was easier to say than the ipsss he tried to make when pronouncing Phillips. Where was that little maggot now, and that arrogant AI that floated around looking like a box?

  It didn’t matter. If Phillips ever crossed his path again, he would kill him. He wasn’t even a soldier. And the AI—that was a device, a tool, of no more consequence than a hammer or a blade. It was beneath Jul’s dignity to even think of its destruction.

  The humans got into this sphere. They must be able to get out again.

  So I can, too.

  Jul stood at the window, trying out that ipsss sound again while he stared up at the sky trying to picture a rust-red planet—home. If he shifted his focus a little, he could only see flecks of saliva on the glass. Then somebody rapped on the door. And that act was yet another lie: he wasn’t a guest whose privacy was respected, but a prisoner of the Office of Naval Intelligence, with no choice over who was admitted to his cell and who was not.

  He concentrated on Raia. His wife would be frantic with worry by now. Would she talk to Forze, retrace his steps, make the link with ‘Telcam and his human associates? She was ferociously intelligent. She could do all this. But how would she know where he was now, if he didn’t even know himself?

  All he knew was that it was called Trevelyan, and it was lies, lies, lies.

  “Jul, it’s Dr. Magnusson.” The woman’s two voices were muffled by the reinforced steel door. He knew it was reinforced because he’d rammed it with his shoulder a few times. “Are you going to behave today?”

  He paused. Magnusson would not be alone or defenseless. Jul understood her not because she spoke Sangheili, like Phillips, but because she wore a translation device. She tended to whisper in her own language so that the synthesized Sangheili voice was more audible. Jul decided to humor her.

  Thank you, Phillips. You taught me that there was no shame in submission if it served the longer game, the wider strategy. See how fast we learn? This is how you make us an even more dangerous enemy.

  “I shall behave,” Jul conceded. He cocked his head and listened for the click of the lock as she deactivated it. “If you tell me why the sky’s blue.”

  The door opened. Irena Magnusson, light haired and wearing a gray one-piece suit, was small even by human standards. Their females were usually markedly smaller than the males, but they still took up arms and served on the front line. Jul had killed quite a few in his time and it had never troubled him, although he was aware of the human taboo against killing women and children. Throughout their history they seemed to have taken very little notice of that themselves, though. And both women and children were capable of killing, so they could never be ruled out as a threat. Jul decided that trying to understand human morality was a waste of time better spent on planning an escape.

  “Rayleigh scattering.” Magnusson carried a pile of papers, a folio, and a datapad. She also had what looked like a small walking stick tucked under her left arm—a weapon that would give Jul a powerful electric shock if he got too near her, exactly like the one the Spartan called Naomi had used on him. “Perhaps you credit a Sangheili scientist for discovering the phenomenon, but we name it for John Rayleigh.”

  An armed guard followed her into the room and stood barring the door, hands clasped behind his back. Jul was beginning to filter out the human language and listen only to the Sangheili translation generated in a good approximation of Magnusson’s own voice, but he forced himself to pay attention to this English. There would come a time when he’d need to understand as much of it as he could.

  “I meant this sky,” he said. “This isn’t a real world. It’s a hollow ball.”

  Magnusson laid out her papers on the Sangheili-sized desk. They seemed to have gone to some trouble to make him feel less uncomfortable. “It’s a very big hollow ball built around a star, and it has an artificial climate, so it’s still caused by scattered light in the blue wavelength.”

  “And the Forerunners made this.”

  “Sit down, Jul.”

  “They made stars.” He sat, but not because she’d commanded it. He still towered over her. He could reach out and snap her neck without even rising from the chair, although he knew the guard would cut him down a heart
beat later. “Are there not enough stars already? Billions upon billions. Why build another?”

  “We’re still exploring,” she said. “Maybe the star was already there. It’s hard to be sure. But the sphere’s main purpose was as a shelter from the Flood or the Halo Array. It’s well sealed.”

  “And no sign of the Forerunners.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They’re long gone.”

  Magnusson seemed more interested. Humans had these little gestures that gave everything away. She leaned forward a little, pupils dilated, and she blinked more frequently.

  “They’re your gods.”

  “Not mine,” Jul said. He’d lose nothing by telling her some truths. He wanted her to tell him some in return. That deal usually worked on Raia. “Gods don’t die or forget to return. Gods choose better prophets than the San’Shyuum, too.”

  “Do you believe in any gods?”

  “No, but I’m prepared to be persuaded if one should appear.”

  Magnusson gave him that odd look, wrinkling her nose and pulling her brows together, something that Jul associated with human disapproval. But this was something different. Her lips curled. Then her teeth glinted.

  Jul didn’t like human smiles. They were yet another lie, an expression of happy harmlessness that was actually the baring of fangs.

  “Very wise,” she said. “I’d ask for proof as well.”

  “What do you want from me? The Covenant has been destroyed. You hold peace talks with the Arbiter. What use am I to you?”

  “Ah, you’re unique, Jul. A live Sangheili, off his home territory. I don’t think we’ve ever had one before. Who knows what we can discover about one another?”

  “The last time humans sought information from me,” he said, “one of your Spartan demons used electric shocks to do it.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that. Spartans aren’t known for their diplomacy.”

  “You still require something from me, or else you would simply have killed me to silence me. It’s usually information. You tell me what will happen to me if I don’t comply, or offer me some incentive if I do. That’s how you work, yes?”

  “What intelligence would we need from you? We know where your homeworld is. The Arbiter’s hosting human guests in his keep. You no longer have a fleet. And we’ve acquired Huragok. Engineers.” Magnusson sat back in her seat. “They’re living blueprints. Everything they’ve ever built or modified, every ship or weapon—we ask nicely and they give us every detail we need.”

  Jul simply sat and stared at her. It wasn’t his job to beg for answers. She’d grow tired of the game and get to the point sooner or later. He used to think that he despised humans, but he’d come to realize that he was afraid of them: not because they were stronger, but because they were like bacteria, persistent and adaptable, breeding and multiplying and spreading until they overwhelmed by sheer numbers and infected everything. He dreaded them like a plague.

  And the Forerunners feared the Flood would overwhelm the galaxy? They should have worried about the humans, too. Did they encounter humans on Earth when they landed and built their artifacts? They should have seen the warning signs.

  Gods didn’t make that kind of mistake.

  “Thel ‘Vadam is not entitled to call himself the Arbiter,” Jul said at last. “He’s a traitor. He’ll be overthrown. And then we’ll come for you, and finish the job we started, because you’ll spread across every planet just like the Flood if we don’t stop you.”

  Jul had almost forgotten about the guard standing in front of the door. For a moment he glanced at the man and noted that he seemed oblivious of the conversation going on at the table, just staring at a point somewhere on the wall facing him. Then he touched his finger to his ear. Jul realized he was listening to something on his radio receiver. The guard moved up behind Magnusson, tapped her on the shoulder, and motioned to her to switch off her translation device.

  She nodded, and spoke with him in quiet English words that Jul couldn’t follow, except for two: Sanghelios, whose meaning was clear, and hinge-heads, which he recognized but still didn’t understand. Whatever the guard had told her had made her smile. For a few moments, she twiddled a stylus between her fingers, reading the papers laid out on the table in front of her, and then touched the translation device again.

  “Things are getting quite tense on Sanghelios,” she said. “There’s been a bomb attack in one of your cities and reports of Jiralhanae attacking Sangheili. I thought that might cheer you up, seeing as you’ve been planning a revolt.”

  So ‘Telcam had made his move. Jul’s first thought was worry for Raia, and his second was frustration that he wasn’t there to fight. “As I said, ‘Vadam will be overthrown.”

  “I should hope so,” Magnusson said. “It’s costing us a fortune to arm your insurrection. Yes, your friend ‘Telcam knows he’s being bankrolled by ONI. Still, we did get a Huragok out of it.”

  So I was right—at least partly.

  Jul had seen the female shipmaster, the one they called Osman, delivering arms to ‘Telcam. But he hadn’t realized the monk had known exactly who he was dealing with. Jul had been so sure that ‘Telcam was being duped. How could a fanatical member of the Abiding Truth strike a deal with the enemy? Everybody seemed to be abandoning their senses.

  “What did he offer you in exchange?” Jul asked.

  “We agreed to stay out of each other’s keeps, so to speak. We help ‘Telcam remove the Arbiter and set up a religious state—you agree to stay away from human territory.” Magnusson was still fidgeting with that stylus, twirling it slowly between her thin, wormlike little human fingers. “But it’s capability that counts, not intent. I’m afraid we have to make sure you can never threaten us again, no matter how many assurances you give us. We’re rather unforgiving when it comes to attempted genocide.”

  Jul should have known better than to expect anything else from humans. They were incapable of giving up their expansionist habits. The Arbiter was a fool, as Jul suspected, and thought he could trust them when they said things would be different. This was exactly what had made Jul join the coup against him.

  “We should have wiped you out,” Jul said. “We could never coexist in one galaxy.”

  “But you never got the chance.” Magnusson did one of those tight smiles, the one that showed no fangs but oozed contempt. “Nor will you ever get one again. I agree with you—one of us has got to go, and my job is to make sure it’s not us.”

  “You’ve lost hundreds of warships. You can’t possibly threaten Sanghelios.”

  “Oh, come now, Jul. You know it won’t be that old-fashioned. You’re already sliding into civil war for the second time in a year. And we’re ONI. We do things differently to Admiral Hood. None of that Nelsonian square-jawed stuff.”

  The translation software didn’t manage to interpret the last few words. Jul heard only the English. Magnusson pushed back from the table and got up to wander around the room. What could he possibly do for her that was of any use? Unless this was all a bluff, unless the humans had no intelligence or functioning warships, then all Jul knew was what ONI seemed to know already. In fact, they knew more than he did.

  For a moment he found himself distracted by the idea that the Forerunners could have built stars. That dwarfed the technology of the Halo Array. Millennia later, no civilization had even come close to that. What else had these not-gods been able to do?

  “I don’t like the food here,” he said, changing the subject. “It upsets my digestion.”

  “The more you tell us about your native foods, the more I’ll be able to get supplies that suit you. I thought you were satisfied with the meat.”

  “I am. But the grain gives me gas.”

  “Wheat, you mean.”

  “Yes. The grain the Kig-Yar grow—that’s a Sangheili crop. Can you not acquire some of that?”

  Magnusson smiled again and sat down. “I never saw you people as farmers.”

  “We
’re not. The San’Shyuum kept us supplied, and what farms we still had were maintained by alien labor.”

  “So you’re having to learn to take care of yourselves again. No hired help in the fields. No Huragok to build and repair machines for you.”

  Jul felt a little mocked. “We are, and we are succeeding,” he said, indignant. Could this creature survive without the trappings of technology she didn’t understand? “And my wife believes self-reliance is the key to regaining our military greatness.”

  Magnusson just nodded. “We’ll find some of that grain for you. What’s it called?”

  “The Kig-Yar name is irukan.”

  She pressed the end of her stylus, making it click, and pushed it across the table to him with a sheet of paper. “Give me a shopping list.” Again the translation failed. “Write down a list of common foods. I’ll do what I can.”

  Jul fumbled with the stylus. It was short and slender, far too small for Sangheili hands. Eventually he managed to grip it like a dagger and held the paper steady with his free hand while he scrawled unsteady ideograms. It looked like a child’s first efforts, and he was embarrassed. Perhaps Magnusson didn’t know what passed for neat handwriting in an alien system. He pushed the paper back across the desk to her and watched her frowning at the shapes, eyes scanning.

  “These are all staples, are they?” she asked. “Anything exotic?”

  “No. Just basic grains and fruits.”

  “What do you feed your livestock?”

  She was trying to be sociable by chatting about irrelevant nonsense to him. Humans always assumed other species shared their social conventions. “The same grain,” Jul said, wishing she would get to the point and simply threaten him. “I’m trying to keep this simple for you.”

  Magnusson folded the paper and put it in her pocket. “Do you have children?”

  “Of course.”

  “They’ll be missing you.”

  “No. They won’t. No Sangheili is allowed to know who his father is.”